Change your bedtime, get your fill of sunlight, limit your screen time. Every year, all the advice is good to prepare for the time change. But why will France change the time again this Sunday, October 27, when a project to remove it was adopted in 2019? If gaining an hour of sleep this weekend will delight some, the reasons for this postponement will despair others. We’ll explain it to you.
A measure introduced in 1975
To understand the current situation, we have to go back to 1975. After the oil shock of 1973, France experienced a surge in oil prices. Now is the time to save energy. And what better way to reduce our lighting needs than to benefit from an extra hour of sunlight? The time change therefore quite naturally emerged as the best temporary solution and was finally implemented by decree in September 1975. But after half a century of application, this measure no longer has a provisional character. .
However, this measure has many critics. In question: its correlation with the increase in car accidents. After the change to winter time, the hands move back and the night is therefore advanced. And when there is a reduction in light, there is a reduction in visibility for pedestrians and cyclists. Beyond threatening our security, the time change, which some scientists describe as a chronobiological misinterpretation, would also cause sleep problems. Enough to motivate its deletion. Especially since with the marketing of low consumption bulbs, the energy saving, its primary objective, is now almost zero.
84% of French people in favor of its removal
Faced with numerous criticisms, in the summer of 2018, the European Commission launched an EU-wide public consultation. In total, 84% of the 4.6 million voters were in favor of removing the time change. Same pattern in France. In a survey carried out in February 2019 by the National Assembly, 84% of French people expressed their desire to end the time change. Among them, 59.17% wanted to stay on summer time.
Faced with this great success, the European Parliament also approved the end of the seasonal time change on March 26, 2019, on the condition that it be postponed to 2021. With this proposal, each country retained the right to choose its time zone. Some states such as France or Ireland preferred summer time, while Denmark or the Netherlands leaned towards winter time.
But to protect the internal market and avoid numerous time differences, the European Union finally asked its members to coordinate and agree on a single time zone. A laborious step, postponed since the Covid-19 health crisis, the war in Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East. The time changes are therefore likely to last for a few more years.